Is the sloth slothful? Allusion, metaphor, proverbs and the Seventh Deadly Sin declare it. So it must be true. The sloth could paint a Mona Lisa, it could be another Caesar, but it doesn't have the time. “For days and days among the trees I sleep and dream and doze, just gently swaying in the breeze, suspended by my toes.”

Well, it turns out that it isn't true. We report the first recording of sleep in a wild animal. In the wild, the sloth sleeps for a healthy nine and a half hours a night. The slander of sloths may have arisen because sloths in captivity, having nothing better to do, sleep for longer. Thanks to fabulists such as Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen, our animal lore is anthropocentric furry tails. Cats do not have nine lives: and dead cats do not bounce, they splat. Bread is bad for birds. Bulls are colour-blind: movements, not red rags, provoke them to charge. Barking dogs are said not to bite: but do not trust the seat of your trousers to that fable. Elephants are as forgetful as any other animal, and they are not afraid of mice. That legend arose because Hannibal's elephants were stampeded by squeaking pigs' bladders.

Can human folklore be more accurate? There is a popular legend that Australians cannot give XXXX for anything but killer lager. We report an Australian driver who had protected his keg of beer with a seat-belt, while allowing a five-year-old boy to crawl unrestrained over the back seat. When arrested, he did not understand the complaint. For man may be a reasoning animal. But, when it comes to his ancestral axioms, we should look at them through narrowed eyes.